Mass Effect: Andromeda’s creative director thinks a sequel to the controversial RPG could have fared much better.
Developer BioWare’s series of Mass Effect games were beloved for their cast of characters and rich sci-fi world. But Mass Effect: Andromeda didn’t enjoy the same praise when it launched in 2017, partly due to technical issues and some divisive design decisions. Now, the game’s director says a sequel would have been much better and he wishes the team had gotten the chance to make it.
"I only wish we had been able to then do a second one,” says creative director Mac Walters, speaking to Eurogamer. Walters was also a writer on the original Mass Effect trilogy and saw first-hand how those games improved with each entry. “You would have really seen that polish just like we did from [ME1] to [ME2] on the original [trilogy],” says Walters regarding an Andromeda sequel.
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"With Mass Effect, arguably there's lots of things that we didn't do right, but then we got to hone it and improve it on Two, and then perfect it on Three,” continues Walters. “With more time, Anthem was already trending to something that was actually pretty unique and interesting and had a really legitimate argument to be in the game space, but it just needed time to get there.” Walters says he’s “a hundred percent certain” that the team would have improved on all of Andromeda’s faults with a sequel.
Walters also addresses some of what went wrong in Andromeda’s bumpy development cycle, saying it was difficult to juggle what fans loved about the series with new innovations. "It wasn't just making another Mass Effect game,” says Walters, “which the team was well on their way to doing, it was how do we do it and also innovate in more of an open-world space?"
Walters elaborated that the team had to “relearn, re-figure out” several things about making a Mass Effect game again, but that wouldn’t have been an issue with an Andromeda sequel since the team already had an existing foundation to build from.
For now, BioWare is booked and busy with the upcoming Dragon Age: Dreadwolf and a mainline Mass Effect sequel.
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